


What Ever Happened to the Teenage Dream

by Anonymous



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 10:04:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19207141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A trip down memory lane. Some detours.





	What Ever Happened to the Teenage Dream

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bisexualalienblast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualalienblast/gifts).



> Written in disordered haste for Amanda, who deserves a bit of cheering up. 
> 
> Entropy level: high

[ _Musical Intro_ ]  
_The exodus is here_  
_The happy ones are near_  
_Let’s get together, before we get much older  
__It’s only teenage wasteland…_

ALEX MANES: Is this where I’m supposed to repeat the question in my answer so it sounds like a complete sentence? Okay. I first noticed Guerin in… well, he’d always been around, you know? Since middle-school, which was when he came back to Roswell.

ROSA ORTECHO: Guerin got hot during senior year. My senior year, his junior year. He had the best hair I’d ever seen on a whiteboy.

LIZ ORTECHO: Michael Guerin was the smartest person at school. I’m still bitter about it, yeah.  Because he never did any work and he was always showing up late, if he even bothered to come to class. I mean, I understand why _now_ ; back then I had no idea what his life was—… [ _pause_ ] Anyway. Michael outscored me on every. single. AP test.

KYLE VALENTI: I didn’t fuck with Guerin in high school.

MARIA DELUCA: I don’t actually remember Guerin from high school. He was a year younger than me and Rosa, so not somebody I would’ve paid attention to.  

ALEX MANES: Guerin had kind of a lone-wolf thing going on. Pretty unapproachable.

LIZ ORTECHO: We tolerated each other. He brought out my competitive side.

ALEX MANES: Max and Isobel were the only people he hung out with. I don’t think anyone knew they were family back then, so it just seemed weird that Guerin was inseparable from the Evans twins. I went in and out of thinking he and Isobel were dating, which sounds so ridiculous now.

ISOBEL EVANS: Ew. Just ew. Me and Michael? _No._

ROSA ORTECHO: He liked old music. No Third Eye Blind for that chamaco. I taught him a thing or two, if you know what I mean.

ISOBEL EVANS: God, why would anyone even _think_ that?

ROSA ORTECHO: He was a fast learner.

ALEX MANES: We didn’t have many classes together. Guerin was in all the AP stuff with Liz; meanwhile I didn’t give two shits about school. I was going to be a musician.

KYLE VALENTI: I was a dick in high school, all right? I beat up on Alex, who’d been my best friend before he came out, and me and my dumb jock friends were, like, your classic school bullies. It’s really shameful to remember now. Guerin, though—we had all these ideas about what foster kids were like, how hardcore they were, and Guerin had a _reputation._ Back in… tenth grade, maybe? some kid catcalled Isobel Evans, and I saw Michael Guerin break his _nose._

ALEX MANES: Things had gotten pretty bad for me.  

LIZ ORTECHO: I wish I had more memories of Alex from that spring. But I was pretty absorbed in my own life.

ALEX MANES: I’d come out and I _owned_ it, but school was hell, home was hell. I was getting angrier and angrier; the tiniest thing would set me off.

LIZ ORTECHO: I was dating Kyle but getting closer to Max, and Rosa kept relapsing, in and out of rehab, so…

ROSA ORTECHO: We were all pretty fucked up. We all wanted out.

LIZ ORTECHO: Alex just wanted to leave. He wanted to play music in a big city. Meanwhile Michael got this amazing full ride to UNM because he was a genius.

ISOBEL EVANS: Max was really happy for Michael when he got the scholarship. I… didn’t want to be left behind. 

ALEX MANES: When I saw that Guerin had stolen my guitar from the music room—I was ready to fight him, I wasn’t afraid of him, but then I saw the sleeping bag and I realized the rumors were true, he was actually sleeping in his _car._

MICHAEL GUERIN: [ _pause_ ] Lots of people had shitty childhoods.

ISOBEL EVANS: To be honest, I had no idea. But you have to remember I was _possessed_ for most of that time. By the guy who went on to become my husband. So I think I deserve a pass, don’t you? Michael had always been a good liar; he hid it from us, how rough he was living. And it wasn’t, like, _obvious_ he was having this big bisexual crisis, either.

MAX EVANS: I called it on Prom Night.

KYLE VALENTI: My behavior at Prom was—pretty unforgivable, honestly. But on the bright side? I gave Michael the perfect opportunity to intervene.

MAX EVANS: I mean, why else would Michael have jumped into a fight with Valenti? He wasn’t stupid; I was the one with the hero complex, not him. After Michael hit Valenti, he and Manes just stood there, in their own little world, staring into each other’s eyes. It was like _Romeo and Juliet_ , you know, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.”

LIZ ORTECHO: Prom sucked. Moving on.

ALEX MANES: The shed was kind of Ground Zero for everything that happened between us.

MICHAEL GUERIN: No. Sorry. That’s a private memory.

ALEX MANES: I tried to kiss him! [ _laughs_ ]

MAX EVANS: But Juliet, in the play, she’s the smart one, because she’s the one who says to Romeo, “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; too like the lightning, which doth cease to be ere one can say ‘it lightens.’”

ALEX MANES: He told me that playing music was the only thing that made all the entropy inside of him go quiet. Then he said thank you, for letting him stay and for bringing him the guitar, and I said you’re welcome, and then I just… I couldn’t stop looking at his lips. So I leaned in.

MAX EVANS: I kept telling Michael to read Shakespeare, there’s lots of good advice in there.

ALEX MANES: But he panicked and pulled back. I was like, _oh fuck._ Now, fast-forward a week of me beating myself up for being an idiot, for daring to think a guy who looked like Guerin, who acted like Guerin, could possibly be into me, could be anything but _straight_. That brings us to the UFO Emporium.

MARIA DELUCA: Ten years Alex kept that secret. Michael Guerin, Museum Guy.

ROSA ORTECHO: Museum Guy?

LIZ ORTECHO: I remember Museum Guy! But Alex wouldn’t say who he was. I _never_ would have guessed Museum Guy was Michael, not in a million years.

ALEX MANES: God, that was, like, the most humiliating job. I had to be nice to tourists and wear a visor. So fucking gay. Gay as in stupid. I wasn’t happy when Guerin turned up that afternoon. Because there I was, at my gay-ass job, wearing my gay-ass visor, and I thought Guerin was there to tell my gay ass that he was sorry, but he just wasn’t into dudes. 

MICHAEL GUERIN: Yeah, I’m gonna plead the Fifth. [ _pause_ ] Wait, Alex said _what_?

ALEX MANES: So I took him back into the museum and told him to talk. Bracing myself for the worst. But he didn’t say anything.

MICHAEL GUERIN: _Alex_ told you that?

ALEX MANES: He kissed me instead! Our first kiss, there, in the UFO Emporium, surrounded by all that fake planetarium stuff… Michael just grabbed my face and went for it. I saw stars, I really did, and I don’t mean the fake plastic ones glued to the ceiling.

MICHAEL GUERIN: Oh he did, huh?  

ALEX MANES: Michael Guerin could _kiss._ Even at seventeen.

MARIA DELUCA: Alex told me… [ _pause_ ] He said he’d stay in Roswell if only… if only Museum Guy kept kissing him.

MICHAEL GUERIN: Well goddamn. In _that_ case.

ALEX MANES: After my shift ended, we went back to the shed together.

ISOBEL EVANS: A _shed?_ That is so Michael, honestly.

MAX EVANS: It was ten years before he told me. And then only the—the stuff that, you know, happened later, when—… So yeah.

MICHAEL GUERIN: I don’t kiss and tell, but…

ALEX MANES: And then we… [ _laughs_ ] No, that’s what we did. We laughed, ’cause we had no clue what we were doing. I hadn’t done it before and Michael’d only slept with girls. And he told me… [ _unintelligible_ ] What? Oh, _speak up._ Sorry. He told me that he’d never done it with anyone he liked as much as he liked me.

MICHAEL GUERIN: After I got Alex out of his stupid-tight pants, I went to work on mine, right? And when I looked up from my belt, Alex was… [ _pause_ ] Can I do this by myself?

ALEX MANES: Eleven, going on twelve years. That’s a long time, right? But I still remember him perfectly, the way he looked that afternoon. Felt like I’d been waiting my whole life to—to get my hands into that _hair_ of his, for one thing.

LIZ ORTECHO: I assume that was when the screen tastefully faded to black.  

MICHAEL GUERIN: Alex. Aaaaalex. I remember all the dirty details. This is just for you, _baby_. Hope nobody’s listening.  
            As I was saying. When I looked up and saw you lying on the mattress, pulling your knees back—. Fuck. I almost blacked out from the sight of _that._ We hadn’t talked about it yet, how we were gonna… but you just went for it, huh? Trying to do it all yourself. But I wanted—I’d gone to the library to do some research…  
            Did I ever tell you that? I don’t think I did.  
            Well, the day before everything happened, I was at one of those library computers, all furtive and paranoid somebody was gonna look over my shoulder and catch me Asking Jeeves about the finer points of gay sex… And finally, like, “Dear Jeeves, is bisexuality real or just something David Bowie invented?”  
            After all that—no _way_ I was gonna stand by and watch you finger yourself open. Not a chance, Manes.  
            Getting warm in here. Should I take my shirt off? [ _pause_ ] Just kidding.  
            You got really self-conscious about letting me do it. Remember? When you asked me how I wanted you, I said _hands and knees_ ; that’s what the internet said might be most comfortable for you. Then you turned all bossy, like, “I don’t care what position I’m in, as long as we do it.” Classic Alex Manes right there. “Get on with it, Guerin.”  
            So I squirted a big dollop of cold lube right on your ass, ’cause you were being a brat. That was funny. Then after I got one finger in, I asked if you were okay, and you said, “Yeah, Guerin. I thought you’d be bigger than that.” We couldn’t stop laughing, I remember we were just cracking up the whole time.  
            I asked you to flip over. I wanted to see you. It took me a while to get inside you, ’cause you were pretty tense at first and I was terrified of hurting you. Trying to go slow, like… Kissing you to take your mind off it. Babbling whatever came into my head. I don’t know what I said, but suddenly you interrupted: “You’re damn right you’re taking it next time!” [ _laughs_ ]  
            Kind of surreal, falling in love at seventeen. We were so young. _I_ was so young—except, wait, technically I was born in like 1940 or something, so we might actually have a Captain Kirk situation going on here. What a dirty old man I was at seventeen! But I knew I loved you. I’ll be twenty-nine soon and I still love you, so that’s lucky.  
            What else do I remember from… before the shit hit? [ _pause_ ]  
            I’m pretty sure there was a Radiohead album playing in the background.

ALEX MANES: Because of everything that happened after that, it took a while—like, more than a decade—for the good parts to be good again. But… they’re pretty fucking good, aren’t they? I met the love of my life when I was seventeen!  
            Later, when people asked me when I lost my virginity, I would say, “Somewhere around Track 11 of _OK Computer_.”

MICHAEL GUERIN: “Lucky.”  

[ _Musical Outro_ ]  
_What ever happened to the teenage dream?_  
_Surprise, surprise  
__The boys are home…_

LIZ ORTECHO: Alex and Michael! Hi!  
            Sooooo, I got this idea to interview everyone and have y’all reminisce about how you two met cute in high school…Then I edited the interviews into this fun little video for you to cherish forever and ever! Except it came out a little weird? And a little sad? Once you start remembering things, it’s hard to stop and—… Certain things were _not_ as cute and sweet I remembered. So the video kind of failed. But I decided to give it to you anyway.  
            I love you, okay? We all do. Me and Rosa and Kyle and Max and Isobel and Maria.  
            And we’re _so_ thrilled. That you’re married. To each other!  
            We’re totally _not_ thrilled that you pendejos eloped instead of letting us throw you a big splashy wedding… You’re really terrible friends. Maybe Isobel and I will surprise you with a party when you least expect it. That would serve you right. For sneaking around behind our backs!  
            Sooooo here’s your stupid wedding video. I hope you enjoy it. Even though it’s weird and sad. Alex, querido, you did amazing. Michael wouldn’t cooperate when I tried to interview him. And then he took the camera off into a room _by himself_ and made me _swear_ not to listen to what he’d recorded. I’m not accountable.  
            Okay, newlyweds. Enjoy your life together. You’re both assholes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Song credz: T. Rex, The Who. 
> 
> Previously: THE LIGHT-YEARS, SATELLITE'S GONE, etc. 
> 
> <3


End file.
